Shazam say that the success on Ovi Store has "reinforced its leadership position of consumer discovery in the mobile application space". More than 50 million people have used Shazam and it is able to recognise over 8 million different tracks.
The numbers also demonstrate the growing strength of Ovi Store and its ability to reach consumers on a global basis. Shazam joins a number of other application and companies in the '1 million Ovi Store club' including Polarbit (games), Ravensoft (utilities), MMMOOO (themes), Nimbuzz (IM application) and Nokia themselves (Ovi Maps).
Marco Argenti, VP of Media & Games, Nokia said: "Shazam keeps being one of the top apps Ovi Store users love because of its ingredients of success: simplicity, usefulness, fun. This recipe has resonated with music lovers around the world who now can 'tag' the music they like and be able to purchase it from Nokia Music Store with just a couple of clicks".
Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam, said: “Through our relationship with Nokia, Shazam has been enjoyed by music lovers across the globe. We were extremely delighted with the reach of the Ovi Store – in the first 48hrs we reached consumers in 178 countries!”
Shazam can be downloaded from Ovi Store as a free 30 day trial. After the trial is over users can continue using the app on a limited use basis or chose to upgrade to an unlimited usage version for a one-off fee ($4.99, €3.99 or £2.99).
Video demo and interview with Iain Dendle
Key points:
- Shazam is a music recognition application, which is available for most mobile platforms. It allows people to discover music playing in the environment around them. Users record a 10 second clip which is uploaded to Shazam servers and recognised from its fingerprint.
- Once the music has been recognised, users have various options including the ability to download the full track from the Nokia Music Store, discographies, and links to YouTube for the appropriate music video.
- There are also music charts of the most 'tagged' music and there's the ability to share to your friends with a single click (SMS/Email/Twitter/Facebook etc.)
- Shazam is available from the Ovi Store and is also pre-loaded on a number of Nokia handsets, including the 5630 XpressMusic.
- The second half of the video includes a full demo of the application so you can see for yourself some of the functionality described above.
Commentary
It is interesting to see Shazam release numbers for the Ovi Store. For a well known mobile solution, Shazam has released relatively limited information about downloads from App Stores. Shazam did announce late last year that it had achieved 10 million downloads from the Apple App Store (since August 2008). Now it is announcing its numbers for Nokia's Ovi Store, which hints at strategic changes in the App Store world.
Announcements like this represent strong endorsement for Nokia, but they are also very important as proof points. Nokia can use them as case studies to show other developers what is possible. The validation of both the distribution and business model is essential if Nokia is to persuade more content providers to partner with Ovi Store. Clearly it is still early days, but with such examples and growing daily download figures, Nokia is moving in the right direction.
It is also much healthier for developers to have multiple application stores in which to place their products. With the rise of Ovi Store, Blackberry App World, Android Marketplace and third party players like GetJar, it is certain that the industry as a whole will move away from the perception of an App Store monoculture. This is important for the viability and stability of developers' business models, but also underlines that it is early days and many opportunities remain. Or, put another way, the ecosystem is growing - becoming more organic, but many open niches remain.
Rafe Blandford, AAS